Drive a tank, crush a car — a tension release for these parlous times

Nearly 20 years ago, troubled Army veteran Shawn Nelson swiped a 57-ton main battle tank from a San Diego National Guard armory and went cruising through the city, crushing parked cars willy-nilly and running over fire hydrants. Police cars swarmed after him but there wasn’t anything they could do. The tank clanked along for nearly half an hour, with the cop cars following helplessly behind, sirens blaring, trying to clear traffic. (Fortunately, the tank could only top out at about 30 mph.) Eventually, the tank got hung up on a freeway divider and that was the end of that. Police, who had managed to open the tank’s hatch, shot Nelson as he tried to dislodge the behemoth and continue his rampage. He died later in a hospital.

Now, in a far more controlled and peaceful (not to mention legal) environment, you, too, can see what it’s like to drive a tank and even crush a car. In Kasota, Minn., some 70 miles southwest of Minneapolis, Tony Borglum has created “Drive a Tank,” a 30-acre site where, for about $400 on up, you can pilot a tank or an armored personnel carrier or another military vehicle and see what it’s like to thump over hill and dale in a vehicle weighing 62 tons (that’s the size of the Chieftain Mark 10, a British main battle tank Borglum has in his stable.)

Borglum, a member of a family that owns a construction business, says he got the idea for a tank park when visiting England about eight years ago. Always interested in military vehicles, Borglum happened upon a place where, for a fee, civilians could come drive a tank. He found out there were at least a dozen similar venues in England and thought, “wait a minute. If the U.K. can support all these operations, why not the U.S.?”

One thing led to another and “I now have 38 vehicles. Two Chieftains – a Mark 10 and a Mark 11 – and a T-55 Soviet tank and a Swiss Centurion” and a bunch of other combat vehicles.

He says that among the 1,500 or so people who come very year to visit the park, he gets many veterans.

“We just had a World War II vet who was with the 99th Infantry Division,” Borglum said. “We also had a guy who was on an M48 (tank) in Korea.”

The cars they use as crushing exemplars come from local businesses that have no use for them – the cars were likely headed for the wrecking yard anyway.

As for what it’s like to have a fling at driving a tank over a car, “we tell people it’s like stepping on a (soda) can,” says Drive a Tank’s managing director, Ben Lundsten. “All the windows burst and the car’s basically flattened. It’s pretty great.”